With every looming recession, the banks are on fire.
This is also the case at present.
The banks are also aware of this.
Commerzbank boss Manfred Knof expects increasing corporate insolvencies.
The words of the chief banking supervisor of the Bundesbank, Joachim Wuermeling, sound all the more gratifying.
Based on the current data situation, he does not expect a credit crunch in the coming year and certainly not a new banking crisis.
One can only hope that the Bundesbank board will be right.
The nervousness with which supervisors are currently looking at banks is justified.
Nevertheless, the current figures are far from showing a banking crisis.
So far, European banks have been stable.
This also applies to the German institutions, whose excess equity capital the Bundesbank put at 150 billion euros at the end of September.
It's a comfortable cushion to weather a recession.
It is also true that the German bank supervisors introduced additional, so-called anti-cyclical equity buffers at the beginning of the year in order to protect the institutes from the excesses on the real estate market in particular.
And it is part of the fact that the banks are fighting back.
But no institution has ever perished from too much equity.
The banks must also be aware that the stricter requirements make them more resilient.